A Cruel Business
by SarahFromHell
Summary: (alternate title: City of Night) Kathryn and Sebastian meet again as adults, this time in Los Angeles. Sebastian wants to rekindle their relationship, but Kathryn has other concerns...
1. Chapter 1

_You know dark days, you know hard times_

"Nice for What", Drake

Sebastian:

She's an aspiring actress, like everybody else.

Actually, an aspiring actress slash model slash writer—like everybody else.

I run into my former step-sister by accident, at a large, dive-ish bar in Hollywood. We haven't had anything to do with each other in years. I'm there alone, scoping the place out, because supposedly this bar is popular with females of the goth/emo/headbanger variety. It's crowded tonight, lots of groups of people sitting or standing at the high tables, talking loudly over the loud rock music. I do see one girl with the requisite leather and fishnets, but my attention is distracted by—_Damn, is that really her?_ I go over to her table and say hello.

"Excuse me," she says to her group, "this is one I'm going to need some alone time with." She has this big grin pasted on her face, just as if we'd parted on good terms.

She hustles me over to a table at the opposite corner. Once we're settled in, I give her the once-over. Impeccable burgundy-painted toenails, jeweled open-toe heels, short dress, diamond stud earrings, black on black on black. _Boho vibes? Casual chic? Fuck that._ A lot of the girls who come here from somewhere else try to fit in by copying the styles around them—Venice faux-hippie, say, or West Hollywood fitness sexpot—not realizing that the decision-makers in this town prize individuality over nearly everything else. Not Kathryn: her style is aggressively New York.

No more large ugly cross necklace, I notice. But that doesn't mean she isn't still using.

"What are you doing here?" she says.

"You mean in this bar?"

"I mean in LA." Like it's her own personal territory. Her glare takes me all the way back in time to when our respective parents first got married to each other and, poor us, we had to share the same spacious luxury townhouse. Although, to be fair, she has more reasons to hate me now than she did back then.

"I'm a photographer. Magazine glamour shots, some headshots, some boudoir work."

"Boudoir work. Wow, color me shocked."

"Hey, I'm a professional. Got a BA in Photography and everything. Although I'll admit the 'photography practice' I got in high school didn't hurt."

I wink at her, hoping to get her to crack a smile, and for a second I think she's about to. But the second passes.

"And you couldn't do all this in New York why?"

"Because I didn't want to spend my entire life in the same city. Besides, the industry I work in is shifting more and more to this location. Supermodels were a 90's phenomenon. Nowadays most magazines would rather do a photo spread of a woman who's actually done something."

"I see."

"So what brings you over here to Los Angeles?" I say.

"My career," she says, rather shortly. "I'm an actress."

"Really?"

"Yes."

"I just never pegged you for the type. I thought you'd wind up in Wall Street, or as a corporate lawyer, some career swimming in power and cash. Or else in politics, you've definitely got the manipulative skills for it. That's a compliment, by the way. I thought I might see you on the cover of Time or something, trying to be the first female president."

She rolls her eyes.

"No, no, and no."

"Why not?" I counter. "You were student body president at Manchester, if I recall. Isn't it just a short step from there to first female president?"

"Uh, no, it isn't," she says, laughing. "And all those things you mentioned were my mother's dream careers for me, not mine. Besides, I don't fit the current political zeitgeist. Practically every popular politician these days is either a woman-hating gorilla, or some nutjob who goes around screaming 'Eat the rich!' Not my style."

"And what's wrong with eating the rich?" I say. I'm saying it mostly to tease her—I don't really follow the news that closely. But it's also true that when I'm making small talk with one of the models I work with, and the conversation turns to politics, every single one of them I've spoken to has turned out to be a hardcore Sanders fan.

"Maybe _you_ get some deviant pleasure out of the idea of being a homeless person's next tasty snack. I think I'll decline, thanks."

"Well, I suppose a mob with torches and pitchforks could come any day now for my father or any of his ex-wives, including and especially the one who gave birth to you, and to be honest I don't think I'd even shed a tear. But as for myself, I think I'm pretty safe. Don't get me wrong, I'm doing fairly well, but I'm not making the crazy amounts of money we grew up with, either. Are you?"

"Not yet. But I will be." She says it as if daring me to call her wrong.

I don't say anything in response, just give her a short chuckle and a little sardonic smile—enough to communicate that I know the odds as well as she does.

There's a silence between us. I decide to change the subject.

"So now that we've cleared all that up, we can get down to the real question. Single, married, or otherwise taken? Open relationship? Domestic partnership? Kinky sex commune?"

"Single and not looking. Not even that into sex these days, if you really want to know the truth."

"Interesting. I'm single these days myself."

She smirks. "How long did it take you to get rid of the bible thumper?"

"She got rid of me, if you must know."

"Why?"

"Because I cheated on her. Some people just aren't cut out for monogamy, and it appears that I'm one of them. But all that's ancient history now. I'd much rather talk about you. Why exactly are you single and not looking? Are you saving yourself to screw the casting director, or…?"

She raises an eyebrow, then looks directly into my eyes. "Did you ever do that?"

"What?"

"Sleep with someone you weren't attracted to."

"Just once, and I can even tell you who it was. But you're not going to like the answer."

Her mouth curls up in a half-smile. "I've survived public humiliation at the hands of a fundamentalist freak, _and_, so far, the movie business. I think I can handle whatever it is you're so desperate to tell me."

All right.

"It was a girl I slept with for a bet," I tell her slowly, deliberately, wanting her to understand. "And at first, that was the only reason. But then I fell in love with her. And she changed me, in ways I can still feel today."

"Seriously? You're still all weak over that little blonde?"

"Look, I'm not saying we were right for each other or that things were perfect between us. If they were, she'd be here with me now. But I learned a lot from Annette. She taught me a lot about love, about…"

"Sebastian. Listen. To. Yourself." She gestures on each word for emphasis, her expression veering between amused incredulity and total disgust. But what did she expect? That I'd stay in my adolescent cynical pose forever?

"Listen to _your_self," I say, "practically foaming at the mouth with jealousy over a woman you yourself consider pathetic." Although I know full well it isn't really about being jealous. She's testing me, just like I've been testing her, feeling out the edges of new Sebastian and seeing how he measures up to the old one. "We haven't even spoken in over a decade. I assume by now she's happily married out somewhere in the Midwest, with three kids and a mommy blog. The real question is, what about you?"

"What _about_ me?" She leans in as she talks, so subtly that I can't really tell if it's by accident or if she's deliberately trying to show me her breasts. Knowing her, though, probably the latter—I remember this trick of hers from our teenage years.

"What have I seen you in?"

"I was in the music video for—" she names a pop/rap song with a baby-voiced female singer over a tinny beat, which was nauseatingly ubiquitous over the airwaves last summer. I haven't seen the video for the very good reason that I was trying desperately to avoid it. "I played the snobby bitch who the singer hits in the face with a pie. I've also done some Law & Order, cellphone commercials, a clothing commercial…oh, and I also do some modeling on the side. Print work, like fashion magazine spreads. Actually it's a bit strange that we haven't run into each other before now. Since you do so much magazine work."

LA has taught her all new lessons in how to hate.

"Impressive. Anything else?"

"I'm also working on a screenplay."

"I'm shocked. What about?"

"It's about a young girl's descent into hell." She draws out the last word with playful Vincent Price-style relish. That's something different about new Kathryn: her gestures are bigger, her facial expressions more vivid. I wonder if she trained originally for the stage. I see a vision of her in my head in period costume as Lady Macbeth, why not?

But no, it's the movies she wants. Fame.

"It's—"she pauses mid-sentence and checks the time on her phone. "I really should get back to my thing."

"Want to pick this up later?" I say, pulling my own phone out.

I fully expect her to say either yes ("looks like we're still two peas in a pod, let's pick up where we left off"), an insulting version of yes ("I missed having my little toy around to play with"), or no ("you're not worth my time, move on"). Instead, she hesitates. She looks down at her drink, pursing her lips, then looks up at the ceiling, then looks down at her drink again. She looks…vulnerable. Unconfident. _Not_ how I'm used to seeing her. The effect is strangely erotic, like catching a glimpse of her naked. An intimacy she clearly doesn't want.

Then, just as suddenly, it's gone. The bored sardonic look has snapped firmly back onto her face, except now I know that it's a mask. She grabs my phone from my hand, pecks out her number, and coolly hands it back. "Game on."

"Game on it is." I give her a feral grin.

"Oh by the way, I almost forgot to ask. Do you still keep a little Dear Diary filled with notes on all your conquests?"

It's my turn to laugh out loud. "'Conquests'? That's so high school."

"Well, do you?"

"I still keep a journal, yes. But these days it's just as likely to have thoughts on lighting techniques, or a random dream I had last night, as anything salacious."

"Okay, we get it, you're a saint." She rolls her eyes again, gets up to go.

I grab her by the wrist and hold her there. As I do, I notice for the first time that night that she's wearing perfume. Her scent is nothing like the Annick Goutal florals she used to wear in middle school and high school, to prove to us all how she was too sophisticated and French for the big name brands. It's much darker, musky and intoxicating. My grip on her wrist tightens, hard enough to hurt. With my other hand, I deliberately trace my fingers in a slow circle across the back of hers.

"I'm no saint, Kathryn," I tell her.

She violently shrugs me off and returns to her group. I watch her ass move under the fabric of her black dress as she walks back. I finish my drink, meditating a bit on the possibilities, then decide to go home—I've lost all interest for the night in metalhead women. My mind keeps circling back to that moment of hesitation, that vulnerable expression on her face. I want to see it again, and soon.

Other people at Manchester Prep told me "the bitch" had cried at her downfall. But I never personally got to see it, being in a coma at the time. Cecile had said more: that the tears started specifically when she saw the picture of her own face on the journal's second page. Not after, not before. I didn't believe her…"I know what I saw, okay? I literally handed her that copy, I was like right there in front of her." I didn't believe it. I never saw.

Now I picture her crying as I ravage her from behind, face down ass up stroke after punishing stroke tears soaking the pillow "Sebastian it's you, it was always you..."

I want her.

No, it's far worse. I want to conquer her.

* * *

Kathryn:

Reminiscing was fun for a few minutes, but I have a life. And I don't like interruptions to that life.

When I get back to the networking event that is my actual reason for being here, all conversations are in full swing. None of the breakout groups parts to let me in. I tell myself circulating is overrated and go back to my own table, figuring I'll just wait for the right moment to say something intelligent, but I can't concentrate on anything anyone is saying. It's just meaningless fragments. The fear has nested on my head, a high-pitched whine blocking out sound.

I excuse myself to go to the bathroom. Cast a quick habitual glance at my reflection in the mirror before entering the nearest stall. Sometimes when I do this I see the left side of my face and want to vomit, but right now it's okay. I rummage in my purse, take out the hand cream I rationally know I do not need, and spread it on my hands. Fear is spreading through every cell of my body.

That smug, arrogant fucker. He could have stayed in New York or literally anywhere else. But no he had to come on my turf, try once again to fuck up my life…

_Yet you _chose_ to give him your number. You didn't have to, no one was putting a gun to your head._

With the fear comes the need. No, _no._ I cannot afford another relapse. I cannot afford to lose any more of my life to this. My fingers run over the contacts list in my phone, hover over the name of my sponsor. It's precisely at moments like this that you're supposed to call them. But if I do it now I'll miss the rest of the networking, and if I wait until afterwards she'll be in bed, she has a husband and kids, she doesn't stay out late like I do. I hate imposing on her, hate relying on her, hate needing her too much._ Just get your shit together for now and call her after it's done. But call her, that's what she's there for. Don't go to bed without calling her. Because if you don't, in the morning you're going to call Pyotr..._

Pyotr whose number I deleted from my phone, whose fake fucking business card I burned long ago, but whose contact info is burned into my brain. He said he'd seen a thousand women like me. That women like me always come back.

I pull myself together, like I've done all my life. When I go back to my table, there's a temporary lull in the talking. Someone asks me, hey, who was that guy who dragged you off? I know exactly what to say.

"Oh, him? He's someone I know from New York, from way back when I was in high school. We had this _scandalous_ affair..."


	2. Chapter 2

Kathryn:

I get back from the event even later than I thought I would. A man I met there ended up buying me dinner. He's a connection, sort of, not for acting but for screenwriting, a veteran TV writer who's been out of the game awhile but wants to get back in now. He's interesting, lonely I think, but non-sleazy. I should be happy about it, but on the way back home I keep on thinking about Sebastian. What he said.

I don't really know who Sebastian is anymore. But I do know that, whoever he is, it isn't the neutered version of himself he's pretending to be. The mature evolved nice guy whose fling with a simple Kansas girl-Manic Pixie Annette-taught him ever so much about life and love. Yeah, right. He may have learned to speak in the jargon of the reformed male chauvinist, but underneath he's the same sadistic bastard he always was. Every line we spoke to each other was another opening salvo in our war. I could feel him probing me, just like he used to, looking for the cracks.

_Okay. I can play that game, Seb. I've been playing it all my life, I never stopped._

"Got a BA in Photography and everything." Was I supposed to be impressed? Like graduating from college is hard. For myself, I never thought for a second that Mother would fund a degree in anything arts-related. My choices were between Harvard and Yale, pre-med and pre-law.

What actually happened was this:

I didn't get into Harvard or any of the other Ivies. Mother's fault, ironically, for shoving me into a completely pointless rehab stay after the Manchester incident. Oh, I tried to make the best of it, continued to get perfect grades, wrote a very inspirational story about my "recovery" for the personal essay, but come on. There were prep-school valedictorians all over the country to pick from that didn't have that gap in their resume. And as far as inspirational stories went, mine was decidedly sub-par, given that the problems I "recovered" from were basically my own fault. Plus my background didn't exactly scream diversity. If I were doing the whole thing present day, I could've capitalized on the #metoo trend by claiming that my drug problem was due to the very traumatic trauma of being date-raped by Court or one of his replicas. Then maybe I would've gotten in. Or maybe not. Back then, we didn't have the vocabulary-back then the operative word was "slut".

I ended up at a small liberal arts college so snobbishly attached to the concept of "liberal arts" that they didn't even let their students have majors. "We teach students how to think critically," blah blah blah. Perfect, since I had no idea what I wanted to do. I took Mickey Mouse classes, tried not to think at all. In the summers I still had Blaine, but during the school term he was all the way across the country at UCLA so I found other dealers, straight guys who gave me discounts in return for blow jobs and quick pity fucks, yes the old coke whore cliche. They didn't teach me anything about love.

I signed up for the college's theatre club, along with a few other random extracurriculars-field hockey, rugby, cooking club, Classic Movie Mayhem, something called World of Darkness which turned out to be nerds sitting around rolling dice-things I thought I might like, for once in my life. By some fluke I ended up with a major role in the theatre club's production. The character I played was nothing like me: a lower-middle-class woman, pathetically needy and hyper-emotional. But over the course of rehearsals, I became her. And coming back from our first performance, from the cast dinner, still high off the adrenaline and the applause, I had an epiphany:

_I didn't want to kill myself._

Not with drugs, not with alcohol, and not in the bed of a sleazy older man with a choking fetish. I didn't want to die at all. In fact, I wanted to live so badly that I'd do just about anything to make myself live forever, the best part of myself-the me I was when playing somebody else.

I would get clean, I realized. And I did. I would get roles and they would turn into more roles and I would be happy. I didn't think then that I would ever relapse.

I told Mother after graduating that I was an actress and that was all I was going to be. She said that if I wanted to throw my life away I could do it on my own.

_You could have at least given me a clothing and makeup allowance. Since according to you I was supposed to be married to a rich geezer by the age of thirty._

I lived in Bed-Stuy and Harlem, the places I was supposed to be afraid of, illegal sublet after illegal sublet. I took day jobs: waitressing, hostessing, office whatever. Waitressing killed my back, but some of the office jobs were worse. I remember sitting in a large group full of "management trainees" while the trainer tried to indoctrinate us into his corporate cult, being asked to "tell us a little about yourselves." Most of the others shared cute anecdotes about their kids. I told them about my acting and that motherfucker, my boss, said "it's great to have hobbies."

I got roles, a few of them anyway, at first mostly microbudget indie horror flicks. Discovered I really enjoyed being a scream queen.

When I'm her-whoever _she_ is-I commit to her fully. I feel what she feels, laugh when she laughs, cry when she cries. I drown myself in the depths of everything she is, and in return I am reborn.

_Congratulations on your BA, Sebastian, you little fucking pussy._

The second I get home I call Gina, my sponsor, just like I promised myself I would. In many ways Gina's my complete opposite: Alabama belle to my New York alpha-bitch, steadfast in her moronically simpleminded faith in God and Jesus and angels while my cynical self struggles endlessly with the Higher Power step, and married to a man I wouldn't touch with a twenty-foot pole. But _she gets it_. Her childhood was like mine: regular school plus finishing school, charity dinners and cotillion, perfect grades and perfect smile. Size zero or nothing.

"What's goin' on?" Her voice pours itself like syrup into my ear. But she's tired, I can tell. Shit.

"I'm sorry I-"

"No sorries, Kathryn, that's what I'm there for. Spit it out."

"It's about this man..."

"Oh!" I can feel her perking up on the other end.

"He kind of ruined my life while I was in high school, and I just randomly ran into him again."

"One of them bad boys, huh?"

"Sort of."

She's practically salivating over my words by now. This is her absolute favorite subject.

Gina professes to be happily married to her husband. But she has crushes, lots of them-the new guy at work, her kid's friend's dad, the neighbor, the neighbor's gardener. Sometimes she has an affair. I tell her to have more affairs, stop letting the Christian bullshit get in the way, you're clearly happiest when you're having one, pink cheeks and big smiles you actually mean for once and zero desire for the drugs. Her husband is away a lot on the weekends, likes to go out to the desert with his buddies and shoot things. She doesn't think he's lying to her about what the trips are for, but it doesn't matter, she falls apart when he leaves her to do everything herself for the weekend. If she's having an affair it's an opportunity, otherwise it's a long hell of desperate attempts to quiet her thoughts with TV and staring down wine bottles and trying to erase from her mind the name of the bar where her dealer hangs out. She always wins those battles. It's the Monday after that's her biggest danger of relapse, when her husband comes back from those trips expecting what he will not find: a clean house.

I give her the redacted details: he's someone from my past, we had a forbidden relationship, and now seeing him again has brought up all these old feelings. Desire for him, combined with the knowledge that he can and will ruin my life, leading invariably to desire for the beautiful simple deadness of a coke high to make all the feelings go away. We'd talked for a few minutes, then exchanged numbers.

"Now you know you shouldn't have done that."

"I know."

"Not if he's going to make you think of substance abuse." But then she wants to know what he looks like. "Is he still cute?"

_Still cute enough to make my darkness look like a joyride, to make my self-destruction look sexy and easy and fun._

"Unfortunately yes. Still handsome and still a bastard." There's a million guys in LA who fit that description, but it seems to satisfy Gina. I conveniently leave out the fact that I _want_ him to be a bastard, that I wouldn't even recognize him if he wasn't one. "I know I should just delete his number. It's just that...seeing him again, it made me realize...I'm alone. And I am seriously fucking _sick_ of doing everything alone."

"You never have to do anything alone. That's what your Higher Power's for. I know you don't like to hear it, but-"

"If you start spouting Jesus at me I'm hanging up."

"You can call it what you want. Or don't call it anything. But we both know that working the steps has got us farther than we'll ever get by ourselves. Just place all those problems in the hands of your Higher Power, and be happy. And remember, you're not alone on the physical plane either. You have friends here. Me, for one."

Her, yeah. And Ofelia who loves to get drunk with me and complain about how her Latina fat ass is always typecasted for the maid parts, and Julie who I did that stupid Gwyneth Paltrow diet with, and Dounia who's spent hours of her life being the person in front of me who I delivered lines to and yelled at and gesticulated at, until I knew I had the script down pat. I don't tell them everything, though. I never tell the whole truth to anyone.

I get off the phone with her feeling about 10% better. Enough to get to sleep. But then I remember the resolution I made this year, to never let a day go by without at least trying to get some work done on my script.

I open up my laptop and stare at the opening of the first scene.

_INT - MANHATTAN APARTMENT - NIGHT_

_A big, empty-feeling apartment on a high floor, decor ultramodern and sterile, all steel and plate glass. It's similar to the apartment Glenn Close paces around in Fatal Attraction to show us how crazy she is. There's a figure pacing around this apartment too, but this one isn't a woman at all but a little girl. LITTLE GIRL is about 8 years old. She walks from one end of the living room to the other, her steps measured and graceful, her face showing unspeakable anguish. She is wearing a darling little dress with a Peter Pan collar._

Whenever I picture this scene, it's the dress that's most real to me. I can feel how the collar itches around her neck, how hot and scratchy the lining is, how tight and pinched her feet feel in the darling patent-leather Mary Janes that invariably go with it. Later in the movie she'll show up as a grown woman, still wearing the same dress. By that time it'll have transformed into a fetish object, something usable.

I feel like I'm still wearing it as I stare blankly at my laptop. Images whirl through my head: the subway car filled to bursting with rats. The prep-school boy who vomits up rats in the taxi while his mother sits in the front seat, seeing nothing. The office with its secret womb of machines. The Devil, easily the least scary creature in this place, who gets down on one knee to offer the girl a deal. But there's no movement to the images, no dialogue, nothing I can grasp enough to write down. Just static pictures, hypnagogic hallucinations. Reluctantly I close my laptop, admit to myself: I'm dead tired. But as always, I can't just fall into bed.

First, I stand in front of the bathroom sink and scrub off the musky-smelling "drawing oil" my old roommate in Bed-Stuy gave me. "It's power," she'd said, meaning dabbing it on my wrists would put me in the power position in any business deal. I wonder yet again why I'm still superstitious enough to wear it to events like this one. Then I get down to the real work, on my face. My "daily skincare ritual", as the magazines put it, assuming anyone still reads magazines. Wash off makeup and SPF day moisturizer with "gentle" cleanser, apply "gentle" exfoliator recommended by Sephora staff until the flakes of dead skin start to fall off, wash with "gentle" cleanser a second time then apply non-SPF night moisturizer with supposedly medical ingredients. A ritual of appeasement to the casting department, my real Higher Power. A cruel and capricious god, but then I never expected anything else.

The brands of the products have changed some since I was a teenager. The ingredients too: more "hypoallergenic", more vegan with no animal testing, less blatant scents and chemicals. But the prices, the prices have only gone up.


	3. Chapter 3

_It was dark clouds on us, but that was perfect for us  
We know you always crash and burn, but it was working for us_

"Racks in the Middle", Nipsey Hussle

Sebastian:

I'd called to invite her out to dinner at a little Japanese restaurant I knew of: dark wood, low mellow lighting, Zen atmosphere, sushi better than anything you'll find in New York.

She'd said, "Cut the crap and just invite me to your place."

She stands in front of the open doorway, looking me up and down. Same heels, same dark lipstick, hair down and no jewelry, black lacy slip dress so low-cut it's basically lingerie. Her face breaks into a wide grin, the biggest smile I've ever seen on her.

"High rise in DTLA, huh? Missing Manhattan much?"

"Maybe a little. Where are you staying?"

"Burbank...not too far from Toluca Lake."

"So you can breathe down the neck of the studios?"

"You know it."

She walks into my apartment like she owns the place. It's the same walk I remember, sensuous without once looking like she's trying to be. That same walk that first made me want her, that first made me hate her when she wouldn't give up to me what I knew damn well it promised.

I slam the door and bolt it. She walks over to my bed and puts her handbag on it, doesn't turn around.

I close the distance between us, push her onto the bed, twist her right arm behind her back and press her down hard into the mattress.

"I've matured since we last knew each other," I say in a conversational tone. "But don't think that means I'm going to be nice."

"Are we at war then?" her voice husky and breathless. Like it's war that really turns her on.

"No, we're not. But that doesn't mean I'm going to be very nice."

I trace my fingers down her neck, down to the neckline of her dress, then past it. No bra, exactly as I suspected. I take one of her small breasts in my hand, play with the nipple, roll and pinch it, then twist it, not too gently. She jerks up against me, a sudden involuntary movement.

I abruptly let her go and move to the kitchen area. _You should recognize this, Kat, it's your own fucking signature move._ "Care for a drink?"

"No."

She stalks toward me. I don't turn away, I never once take my eyes off her.

She moves the way I do. Predatory and perfect.

She grabs me by the back of my neck and pulls me into a kiss, hard and hungry. Her nimble fingers work off the buttons of my shirt. The moment I've shrugged it off she digs her nails deep into my back.

"You like this?" she whispers. "This is what gets you hard?"

"I was hard the second you came in, sis."

I sink my teeth into her neck where it meets the collarbone, deep as her nails went into my back. My fingertips barely brush against the smooth skin of her stomach and inner thighs, still teasing her, still making her wait for it. Our first time, after all these years; I want her to _remember_ it. She shivers and melts under my artful touches, my sadism, letting out sharp gasps and little animal sounds of need. It isn't—I always wondered if it would end up being the same. But she's nothing like them, nothing at all. It's getting harder and harder to restrain myself. We stumble to the bed, locked onto each other. My head is spinning and it's getting harder and harder for me to tell where the line is anymore between war and sex, between conquest and surrender, between winning the game and ending it, between hate and—

—whatever we have. We never called it love. She used to laugh at anyone stupid enough to take that word seriously. I used to laugh at them with her.

Her dress is off, her little wispy barely there lace panties are off, her lipstick is badly smeared. _It's just you and me now._ She bends down and without warning takes the whole of my cock into her smeared doll mouth. I grab her hair and yank her head away, and she grins that evil grin up at me because she knows exactly why I did it. I fish out the condom from the pocket of my abandoned black jeans. She sees what I'm doing and nods, no longer playful.

"Make me feel it," she whispers.

And then I'm slamming into her, hard, from behind, ruthlessly fucking her, my hand slipping up and down on her wet clit as I pull her up roughly against me. My love. She's rising up to meet my thrusts, matching my rhythm perfectly, mouth opened into a continuous banshee scream. She's louder than I could have ever imagined her being, completely given up to her pleasure. _The new sex-positivity trend has served you well_, I remember thinking, the last random thought before all thoughts leave my head and I'm lost in her movements, in her scent, in her taste, in her. Her.

Kathryn.

"Kathryn—"

I gutter out inside her.

I'm collapsed on top of her. She's shifted onto her back. She looks up at the ceiling and strokes my hair absentmindedly. I wrap my arms around her body, holding on to her tighter than I did when we were fucking. Neither of us moves or speaks. We lay there like that for awhile, I don't know how long.

What I'm thinking:

_You could've said my name, you goddamn bitch. _

What I say, in my usual flippant tone:

"Not bad for someone who isn't even that into sex."

She doesn't reply. After about a minute she turns to lie on her side, away from me.

"Why don't you want me to be an actress?" she says.

"The fuck are you—Kathryn, I never said that."

"Yeah you did. You said you wanted me to be President, or a trader on Wall Street or something."

"I was _joking_. Fuck. It's not about... I guess I just assumed that whatever career you chose, you'd end up on top."

"And now you no longer think that way?"

No, I don't. I know the odds. I see ambitious women half our age file past my camera all the damn time, the usual stars in their eyes, the usual dreams.

"I didn't say that. Look, I didn't _want_ you to be anything in particular. I was just surprised."

"I have no idea why," she says into the pillow. "That's all I've ever done my whole life is acting."


	4. Chapter 4

Kathryn:

First I told myself I'd block his number.

Then I told myself I wouldn't pick up when he called.

Then I told myself I wouldn't meet up with him.

Then I told myself I wouldn't cum. As if that makes a difference.

And now here I am, floating on a bed somewhere above LA, lying next to my old nemesis, my old doppelganger, my old almost-lover Sebastian, entwined in his arms, hating him.

Loving him.

He was the only one...he followed me around wanting sex. Just like every other boy. But the difference with him is that it was me he followed. Not the girl I made up, the girl who was sexy-but-not-too-sexy and smiled and loved everyone and won at everything without ever seeming to want to win. Not the perfect girl all the other girls imitated, only ever getting small portions right. The real me. He saw. In the dark, where cameras wouldn't operate, I showed him. And he loved it. And that was enough...enough to get me through high school. Even after the social demise he orchestrated, which meant I had to start over again at a different school. I could do that. I could stand to do it, because I'd had him.

And it didn't matter that he hurt me more than anyone-we were always going to hurt each other.

And it didn't matter that in the end, he betrayed me-we were always going to betray each other.

Just that he saw me. For a little while. Our time together wasn't really all that long. Sometime during the period that I was stuck in rehab our respective parents got divorced, and after that there was no real reason for us to see or talk to each other. If we did it would be war. And I didn't have time for war. I was hounding myself like a slave driver in those days, in rabid pursuit of the Harvard admission I still thought I wanted. I just didn't have the energy to finish my college applications, maintain high grades, stay in my extracurricular groups, hide my coke habit and my sex life, _and_ seriously execute a well-thought-out revenge campaign against my (now former) stepbrother. I thought about it, of course. Played with the idea of buying video evidence from Blaine of their occasional threesomes with Blaine's football bottoms-sessions I knew Sebastian enjoyed all the more because he was never really popular with other boys. _Let it loose, let everyone in school see. You never put the whole truth in that journal._ As far as I knew it wasn't something he did post-Annette, but still. If nothing else the expression on his face in those videos would tell her everything she needed to know about which kind of sex he really enjoyed...It was a fantasy. In real life I refused to ask Blaine for even the tiniest bit of news from Manchester Prep. If he brought it up during a drug buy I told him I didn't want to hear it, it wasn't my focus anymore. But yeah, I thought about it. Jerked off to highly implausible scenes of fucking him in front of her, his holy girlfriend. Making him moan the way I knew I could just from touching him over his clothes, letting her hear it. Letting her see just how eager his mouth was over my breasts, how desperate I could make him for one more feel of my ass, how hungry he could really get. My sexual power over him, which hadn't been enough. After I got into theatre I thought about him less, because the girls I played weren't in love with boys named Sebastian. If they loved anyone it was boys with names like Hamlet and Stanley Kowalski, and though I could spot the little resemblances here and there, they weren't enough to make me want to tear my hair out.

And now? I'm still feeling the aftershocks. The evidence of what he's done to me. My skin is sensitized, alive in all the places his hands have run over, alive deep inside from the way he's ridden me, those fierce sweet thrusts, hand at the back of my neck pushing my head down then pulling me back by the hair to make me look at him... _Okay, he's good in bed. You already knew he was going to be good in bed. _

I meant it, though, when I told him I wasn't that into sex anymore. Since moving to LA I've tried to keep up a steady stream of carefully edited candids for the Instagram: me in a bikini, me in sunglasses and vintage sundress, me walking down the street in heels with power handbag faux-casually dangling from one arm, me in yet another goddamn bikini...it's gotten to the point where the idea that my "sexy look" might have anything to do with actual sex has come to feel completely alien to me. _You're actually the exception, Sebastian. Isn't that ironic?_ Just what his over-inflated ego needs to hear.

His body in my arms is different from what I remembered, coarser and softer at the same time. Not bad exactly, just not the body of a teenager anymore.

My body, on the other hand, remains smooth and tight, toned and perfect. Barre will do that. The day after my first class I felt so sore all over I thought I was going to die from the pain. But you can't argue with results.

I leave his apartment early in the morning so I can get to a cattle call on time. It's for a film part, I don't even bother to go to the modeling ones anymore. When I first started going to these it felt like the most demoralizing thing in the world, sitting on a bench next to fifteen slightly different versions of me, all of us with hair and makeup on point, all of us wearing the same practiced bored look, all of us probably the hottest in our respective high schools. Now I'm used to it. I use the time to practice my meditation exercises, or to look at memes on my phone if I'm really having a bad day. Right now, though, I'm thinking about Sebastian, and my face keeps breaking out into a grin. Stupid happy.

The crazy thing? It isn't just the sex I'm remembering.

A voice inside says:

_Don't let go this time. He's your soul, your true double, the realest part of you. Without him you would've come to nothing at all..._

Another voice deep inside whispers:

_You're still nothing_.


	5. Chapter 5

Sebastian:

This is how it is between us:

One of us texts the other one, _I want to see you again_. Or sometimes just, _Fuck me_. The other replies, _When?_ Arrangements are made.

She shows up in my doorway, walks in, and waits for me to lock the door.

We fuck. Sometimes it's rough and raw like the first time, other times it's more inventive. So far we've used handcuffs, nipple clamps, Vicks...sensation play, trying to stretch the limits of what we can do to each other. We even spend a day "making love", over 24 hours of slow-build sex interwoven with hours-long sessions of tender foreplay. No rose petals on the floor or any of that cheesy bullshit, but still. I don't bring up anal, neither does she. Too much of a reminder of that stupid high school bet? Who knows. We leave marks on each other, scratches and bites. Everywhere but her neck: "Nothing personal," she says, "you know what I do for a living. I can't exactly show up at a last minute taping with a big ass hickey on me." Sooner or later it's morning, business calls, and she leaves the apartment or we both do.

And that's it. That's the entirety of our relationship.

She doesn't really want to go out to a restaurant. Or to a movie premiere. She wouldn't like me to walk her to her car: "I can walk to my car just fine by myself, thank you." She's not in the mood to drive down to Malibu for the weekend, or to check out that new art gallery opening.

One morning we're lying around in bed talking about the industry in general terms, a perfect lazy Saturday, and I'm telling a dirty joke, and Kathryn says, "Oh man, O. would love that. She always—" and then stops herself.

"Tell me about this O.," I say, laying back luxuriantly on the cushions. "What's she like? Is she as hot as you are?" No answer.

"I'm going to go shower," she says finally, and gets up. I follow her in. Soap and steam, hands on waists, soft neck kisses and an expert handjob, I finger her until she cums. We get dressed and have breakfast together, talking about the news articles she finds while scrolling through her phone. But after that she goes, and it's a longer time than usual before she starts responding to my texts again.

I start prowling the bars again, fucking other women. They aren't her. I take one out to a restaurant, then roll my eyes, pull out some bills and leave when she starts talking about her astrological chart. Not that her conversation was interesting to begin with: that was just the most convenient excuse.

I start drinking more at all those bars where I'm ostensibly on the prowl for women.

No really, I'm a connoisseur. Scotch and Patron, all that expensive top-shelf shit that I can't really afford to pound down anymore but I pound it down anyway. Another. A connoisseur of women too. Shit I ought to be, after all this time. Debutantes and college girls and models and actresses, variety of flavors but always only the best. Even tried the true love thing once, a real sweetheart of a blonde but she couldn't tie me down. What I have now with Kathryn is the perfect no-strings relationship. Another. Yeah she's basically the perfect fuck, tight little body and wild in bed, she'll do anything, I mean anything, bit of an ice-cold bitch outside of it but fuck me, I like that, it just makes me want to pound her harder. Another.

Another...

Until one night I hit rock bottom. Alone at home at 3am, knowing already it's a bad idea, feeling like a loser and not really caring if I am, I type "Kathryn Merteuil" in the search bar in Twitter, Facebook, Instagram.

Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

_An aspiring actress without a social media page? What the fuck?_


	6. Chapter 6

Kathryn:

Narcotics Anonymous has taught me enough to recognize exactly what my relationship with Sebastian really is. It's an addiction, and the only way to deal with it is to do a brutal cold-turkey followed by regular participation in the appropriate group: SLA for sex addiction, or maybe a codependency group since I've become so pathetically, disgustingly dependent on him. The first time I came to his DTLA apartment I felt the dread, the knowledge that I was stepping into something that could destroy me. Then he shut the door on it and bolted it. Since then I've rationalized away a lot of that initial fear: addicts are good at rationalizations. I've told myself that it's fine as long as it stays in his apartment, that it's just casual fun for both of us, that he already got his revenge years ago and doesn't actually hate me anymore, even-hah!-that he cares about me enough to refuse to hurt me. Even if I placed the weapon, loaded with live ammunition, right into his hands. Which I haven't actually done-so I tell myself. "I can control this," I've told myself. And that should have been the clue right there.

I haven't told Gina about this. From her perspective I'm doing well: no coke cravings. Ofelia knows something's up, though. She's good at sensing these things, even if she doesn't bother to call herself a "bruja" like her airhead sister does, or "intuitive" or "empath" or any of the other bullshit things people call themselves in this town I stay in for solid career reasons but have already gotten tired of.

Ofelia Angela Rodriguez Martinez, listed as "Ofelia Veracruz" on all screen credits. My best friend. My kindred spirit. My competition.

"You haven't been down to chill nearly as much as usual, and your skin has that inimitable just-been-fucked glow. If it wasn't you, I'd assume there was a new man involved. Not you though. Miss 'I'm way too busy with my career to date any of you peasants.'" Her voice goes clipped and neutral on the last line, with an undertone of harshness that never quite comes out into the open: peak Manhattan white girl. Not a comic exaggeration, an exact replica. My girl knows her stuff. She sticks her tongue out at me.

"Can we please get back to the script? Like now."

We have an audition today, for the same part. I've come to her house early this morning to pre-game. We're sitting at the bar counter of her parents' kitchen, script pages in front of us, Ofelia doing the typical thing I've dealt with since forever where everybody's more interested in my sex life than I am. The film's plot is also about sex, in a way. It's a surreal psychological thriller: married man gets "seduced" into having an affair, only to wake up one morning with his wife disappeared and the other woman in bed with him, claiming they've been married for over a decade. It's a meaty, make-or-break part, and we both desperately want it.

"You're probably gonna get it, though," Ofelia says. "Because of the second scene. They always want a white chick for that girl-next-door shit." She fiddles with her hair, looking more like the girl next door than I ever did in my life.

"No, I'm going to get the part because it's a horror film, and horror is my metier." I don't tell her she has an equal chance at the role because she's so pretty and talented, we're past that bullshit.

The casting pool has been whittled down to five. So there are three other women besides us who could get the part instead. I don't mention this to O.

Showtime: a blank white room with plastic chairs. The screenwriter looks in each of our eyes in turn, as if searching for hidden secrets. The producer gives us all the same look, but directed at our tits. The casting director's a brusque middle-aged woman with dollar signs in her eyes, per usual. The actual director is running late.

"God, look at those bitches. They all look like stupid little newbie Midwest transplants with zilch in the way of acting skills. Fresh off the turnip truck," I whisper in O.'s ear, to cheer her up. She stifles a quick giggle.

Stupid little bitch #1 has started to fiddle with her phone. The others are too afraid to, in case Actual Director suddenly shows up.

By the time he gets there we're all looking at our phones, even me and Ofelia who could presumably be talking to each other instead. We're all asked by the casting director to pair up with somebody who will represent Mr. Married in the first scene. (They're still deciding on who will play him, so sadly we can't do a chemistry test.) I pick O., O. picks me. The other three pick the screenwriter to be their stand-in. No one picks the producer, shock.

I walk towards Mr. Married like a predator. No sashay, just enough movement of the hips to mark what I'm doing as distinctly feminine. I lean over Mr. Married, reaching my arm over, getting up in his space. Ofelia helps me by acting turned on. I say the lines: unimaginative bar pickup lines. Mr. Married does his pro forma resistance bit. I blow through it with a satisfied smile, knowing what he wants. It's mostly the eyes that do the work here: I could literally do this act in sweatpants and have it succeed. The artistry of this moment, the precision of the dance between us, is a turn-on all by itself. I coil and uncoil, my movements slow and then sudden, just like with Seb, but let up the tension at the crucial decision point. The audience has to understand that, as much as he'll claim victimhood later, Mr. Married _chose _to go home with me. I even ad-lib a soft "You're sure?", to which Ofelia gives a businessman's quick small decisive nod. We leave with me on his arm, not leaning on him or rushing him out, but synchronizing our movements as if I've known him for years and years.

As I'm in the ladies room, changing clothes for the next scene, I check my silenced phone and see a text message from Sebastian. He wants to do a long BDSM roleplay, with me as sub. I feel a stab of guilt, then quickly shove it in the trash where it belongs. He's the entire reason I didn't make Ivy League, which is a lot more concrete damage than his supposed broken heart over my calling him a toy, wah wah little Sebastian got his feelings hurt because oh no mean Kathryn called him a name.

I know what he really wants, of course, and it's not BDSM. It's what I want too, but I can't give it to him, not yet. Not until I'm Robyn Wright, Meryl Streep, Glenn Close-until I'm untouchable.

I stuff the heels and dress into my bag and put on something casual yet not at all slobby and with a subtle sex appeal that makes it clear I'm above _trying _to look sexy. I try to change my mindset at the same moment, to that of Girl Next Door. An innocent woman who's truly in love with her husband. I do know what being in love is like, I can play this.

In my screenplay, there's a scene where the girl enters a house of mirrors. She twirls and dances and poses before each one in turn: the fat mirror, the skinny mirror, the cut-you-in-half mirror. An invisible chorus applauds her every pose. It's all fun and games until the killer clowns seep through the cracks in the walls bearing an array of "Saw"-style torture devices, to make her look like she does in the mirrors. She accepts, of course: a girl's gotta get that applause.

I thought I nailed the seduction scene when I did it. But already the fear is starting to kick in.

I seduced Mr. Married in the way I actually like to seduce guys. An authentic performance, Method perfection. But now I'm starting to wonder if I should have done it a different way, the kind of seduction that involves awed smiles and lots of giggling. It's not how I seduced Sebastian, but it's how I seduced Court, Spencer, Cliff...God, even their names are stupid...it's how I seduced my high school guidance counselor. One of the few faculty members at Manchester who took the job seriously. He was just perceptive enough to see that I wasn't actually Marcia Brady, and refused to write me a decent college recommendation letter until I showed him the "real" me. So I fed him a sob story about being a child of divorce, who used promiscuity to act out and had a thing for older men because of the lack of a father figure role model blah blah blah, typical 90s YA "issue" novel stuff. Sat super close to him while we talked in his office, unbuttoned my uniform just enough so he could see my cleavage at the right angle. He looked but never tried anything sexual with me, that wasn't the point. Instead he nobly resisted his feelings, gave me the adult caring and stability that was missing at home, used his insight into the adolescent mind to help me heal and grow as a person, and finally, _finally _wrote me that damn recommendation letter. I would've much preferred to just give him a blowjob in his office and get it over with. But I already knew that wouldn't work. Like many men, he wanted someone younger and dumber, someone who would not just fuck him but make him feel big. I still hate him. I wish I could say I've evolved beyond it, like those "empath" women infesting so much of LA, too wrapped up in yoga and meditation and #gratitude to get honestly mad at anyone. But I still hate him.

That evening, I stir the slightly foul-tasting powder into my herbal tea, as I do every morning and every night. Collagen. For joint health of course.


	7. Chapter 7

Sebastian:

I have her below me. Her. Kathryn. On her knees. Her hands behind her back in the classic ready-for-handcuffs position, but not tied together, not yet. I've decided to make her keep them there like that for a bit, to strain her arm muscles and teach her obedience. Her head is down, submissive, a good girl.

I abruptly reach under her skirt and start playing with her pussy. Stimulating her before she's comfortable with being touched, before she's ready. She winces but doesn't move.

Magnificent.

I sniff my fingers, comparing the scent in my mind to the memory of her scent when my head was between her legs. I want to catalogue all of them.

"Good. Now take off your clothes."

The dress comes off quickly, no attempt at striptease, she only like to tease when she's in control and she's not in control tonight. As she's getting her high heels off she puts one foot on the floor and her head rises slightly. I can't tell whether it was done for leverage or a deliberate provocation.

"Stop." She freezes. I wait, saying nothing as the moment stretches out, wanting to see her get tired and stumble and fall on her ass. She remains in position. "Did I say you could get up off your knees?" My voice silky, threatening.

"I'm sorry," she says in a mumbly, little-girl voice. She's acting: Kathryn was never a little girl.

I want to slap her across the face. Instead I reach out again and take one of her nipples and twist it until, her hands still kept obediently behind her back, she hunches over in a futile attempt to shield herself. I tell myself this is better anyway, more painful.

"That was for lying," I say. She nods, understands.

I circle her, inspecting the scene before me. It's the beginning of the night. She's still again, waiting for me to act. Dress off, bra and heels partly off, but makeup still on, breathing steady, limbs strong, hair presentable, submission bullshit. No panties, by my request. I'd originally toyed with the idea of taking her to a restaurant and making her slip her soaking wet panties to me under the table. Had pictured the restaurant as one of those neighborhood Italian bistros: low lighting, middling prices and a semi-decent wine list, the kind my college friend Andrew goes to about once a month with his wife. Date night. I'd called him up to reconnect just before seeing Kathryn again at that Hollywood bar. He lives up in Vermont or some shit, asked me what it's like living in LA. I told him I go to pool parties and fuck models, which is true. Kathryn is also supposedly a model, although her name didn't come up when I searched for her on Model Mayhem. Kathryn, who isn't my wife and doesn't go to restaurants. Now I've got her on her knees, her bowed head directly in front of my crotch. She will deep-throat my cock right now if I tell her to. Satisfy me. I don't want to be satisfied.

I crouch down and lean forward, as if to kiss her. Unhook her bra and take it off her, slowly, cupping her breasts in my hands and massaging them. Whisper into her parted lips. "Lean back. Spread your legs wide." Move my lips to her neck, to the delicate shell of her ear. "No other movements."

She complies with her usual grace. I move my hands down her inner thighs, light, barely-there touches, and take her shoes off myself. Her toes are manicured and pretty, but the bottoms of her feet are calloused stone-hard. I don't remember them being like that in high school. Her pussy is fully on display now, a void-eye I stare into. Pink lips surrounding the blackness of absolute nothing.

I run my hands all over her at will, lightly, lightly, pinching her wherever I feel like it. Breathe softly onto her exposed pussy. Flick my tongue on her clit once, twice, then ignore it for a while, then return, my hands never once leaving her body. Round after round of this, until she starts to shake, to vibrate with the effort of holding her body still.

I fist my fingers through her hair, yank her up to her feet, drag her to the edge of the bed and lay her out on my lap.

"Did you really think that was going to be your only punishment?"

"No."

Her naked body lies hot on my clothed one. I run my fingers over her bare bottom, preparing mentally for what I'm about to do. Her ass clenches.

"You're afraid. Has this been done to you before?" I feel her shrug.

"Just as a kid."

"Did you like it?"

"No."

"You're going to like it with me. First you're going to beg me to stop..."

Begging me to stop is part of the game; if she really wants me to stop, there's a safeword. Although I have a feeling that Kathryn, being Kathryn, wants to think of herself as too tough to use it.

"...then you're going to beg me for more."

She doesn't say anything.

I begin, slowly at first, smacking each ass cheek in turn, building up a rhythm. Her legs start to kick out, her body squirming in place. The movement quickly causes my cock to get hard and press up against her stomach. How humiliating it must be for her, I think, to know how much I'm enjoying this, and my cock gets even harder.

"Poor Kathryn," I say. "Out there you act like the queen of bitches, but in here you're nothing but my slutty little girl. Do you like that, feeling like a helpless little girl?"

"Mother used a hairbrush," she mutters under her breath.

"Hmm? What was that?"

I give her ass a resounding spank, the hardest I've hit her yet.

"I'm your slutty little girl," she recites. "Your slutty little helpless little girl."

"And does that turn you on?" I whisper, reaching into the folds of her wet pussy, playing with the labia.

She stays silent.

"Answer me slut," I say, my grip tightening.

"I can't...this is pointless. You're just going to punish me again. No matter what I say, there's no correct answer."

I deflate. "Shit Kathryn. You should have said something. I've known you for way too long for you to feel you have to prove anything to me. Especially in bed."

"It's fine. I wasn't traumatized or anything. The other stuff you did before, you know, teasing me, the bondage stuff, I liked that better. But it's fine."

"Look, forget the scene, I just need you to be honest with me. Why didn't you say something?"

She says nothing.

"Kathryn?"

"I wasn't doing this for me."

I turn her head so that her face is angled towards mine. I'm clothed, she's naked and in pain, teeth still gritted against the next smack, her ass practically glowing, but there it is: pity.

"You were right," I tell her. "There is no correct answer." And I begin again.

I spank her until her writhing atop me becomes so frantic I can barely hold her down on my lap, then fuck her from behind. After that, I bring out the nipple clamps. I finger her clit with one hand and twist the clamps with the other, watching her face for the reactions. Which are real? Pain and pleasure can be felt, so much that they overwhelm the body and mind. Or they can be faked.

She calls me Sir and Master and herself my little slut. Later in the night she starts calling herself my little toy. I tell her damn right that's what you are, and take off all of my clothes and push her legs all the way up and fuck her hard from the front, my body crashing into hers with big, slow, brutal thrusts.

She never sucks my cock, but I bring her off with my tongue multiple times. Until she can barely stand it anymore.

Her Sirs and Masters become frayed at the edges, tired and desperate sounding. I pull her into my arms, for cuddles not sex, and she nuzzles up against me gratefully.

We just lie there on the bed together, catching our breaths. I stroke her hair.

"You did good, Kathryn."

"Thank you," she says, too tired to remember to add Sir or Master.

This is happiness. Fleeting, as all our happiness is.

"It's funny," I say. "You move to Los Angeles, and you think that when you get there you're going to go to the beach all the time. And then you don't."

"Yeah."

"We should do that sometime. Just go out to the ocean, make a day of it."

Her muscles tense slightly.

"Kathryn?"

"Sebastian. You just worked my body over brutally for, like, several hours. I am so not up for having this conversation right now."

"You're never up for it." My touch on her hair remains gentle, but the words come out harsh. A recent memory shoots through me, of Kathryn crawling towards me on her belly, kissing the toe-tips of my oxfords, calling herself my toy without being told. "I bet I could make you. In a few more hours."

"Yeah, you probably could. I don't actually like pain, you know. Rough sex, sure, but not real pain. So you could probably torture me for another few hours, and at the end of it I'd break and tell you whatever you wanted to hear. But then you'd have to get me to put my clothes on and get in the car with you, and at that point, the answer would still be no."

"Why?"

She pulls her head up to look at me, then turns away sharply, gets off the bed and starts looking for her clothes and bag.

"Come on," I say, getting up as well. "It's a simple question."

She whirls around to face me.

"Is it?"

"Yes, it is."

"All right, then I'll give you the simple answer. _It's just sex,_ Sebastian. I thought that you of all people would understand that, I don't see why you have to make it so complicated. I mean, I already told you this. All the way back in high school, what was it I said? You're my sex toy, or something like that? I mean, okay, I could have phrased it nicer. I'm mature enough to realize now that it was a cheap thing to say and that I shouldn't have tried to hurt you unnecessarily. And I'm sorry for that. I really am! But the point is—"

I slap her on the face. As hard as I fucking can.

She doesn't stumble, but the force of the slap swivels her head around. She puts her hand to her reddened cheek and just looks at me. Silent.

"I'm sorry," I say, which is true. "I didn't mean to hurt you," I say, which is a really extremely obvious lie.

"Where's the Leica?" she says calmly. Hint of a smile on her face. I remember that smile: back when we went to Manchester it was the only real one she had.

"The what?"

"The Leica, the vintage one you got for your birthday. We both know you still use that thing. I want to look at it."

The pit of my stomach drops. "That's not happening. I'm sorry."

"Fine," she says, her voice shockingly close to tears. "Forget I said anything."

She runs to the bathroom and locks herself in.

I knock on the door, "Kathryn, come on. Open up. Please. Let's just talk about it, okay? I'm sorry, I told you I'm sorry. Kathryn, stop being ridiculous. Let's just talk..." I stop when I realize I sound like the villain in a Lifetime movie.

After about a half hour I speak again: "Kathryn? Are you okay?"

"I'm fine, Sebastian."

After about an hour she comes out, looking put-together and perfect, a vision of sterile loveliness. "No bruising. You got lucky this time, Seb. Try it again and we're over." And then she walks out.

I lock the door behind her, feeling sick. I am sick. Dependent. Obsessed. With Kathryn and her lies. There was a time, a brief glorious time, when I thought we knew each other inside and out. That was over a decade ago.

I know she's not actually happy, even if she smiles when she greets me at the door. I know she's not where she wants to be. Where she wants to be is obvious: the back of the limo, the direct from limo red carpet walk, dress by Dior or Givenchy and given gratis for publicity reasons, the morning after walk to get coffee in baggy hoodie and sunglasses because paparazzi, the Oscar night speech expressing deep gratitude to production crew, friends, family, God.

There's a part of me, the arrogant naïve teenage part, that still can't understand why she isn't there already.

I have no doubt of her talent, her cunning, her ruthless ambition. I've seen it, all of it. That's the problem. I used to sit beside her on the couch as she spoke on the phone to her "friends", the fake sympathy, the fake comfort before drawing out the info she needed to destroy them socially, it was a thing to behold, the acting jobs she did. The way she spoke to her boyfriends too, stroking their worthless egos. Manipulating boys was even easier for her, because she could use sex to do it.

(I remember the way she'd kick her shoes off and lay her head in my lap, tell me she was sick of all of them and I was the only one she could actually talk to. The way she'd tease me on the phone by pretending to be one of my conquests, imitating everything from their vapid conversation to their orgasm voices. The way she'd come to my door in the night, half in withdrawal, saying _"please let me in I know I've been a bitch to you lately but please"_ and slide her body over mine in the dark and cover me with kisses that could almost be read as affectionate, before coming to her senses last minute and fleeing my room. It was a thing of beauty—_"You're just a toy, Sebastian"_—the acting job she did.)

My Hollywood star. No compunction about using her body to get what she wants, no conscience to stand in her way, she should fit in great here. _So why don't you have a social media page?_ I did ask her, at one point. She said:

"I got rid of it. Too much of a time suck."

I knew she was lying.

_Who did you fuck, who did you fuck over, who did you..._worse? I have scars on my body that say she's capable of anything. Mostly faded by now, but still. I picture Mafia deals, hitmen...no, that's not real life, that's the plot of fucking _Mulholland Dr._ Get it together.

The next morning I start methodically searching through the episode cast lists for Law & Order on IMDb. There's no Merteuil but two Kathys, two Katherines and one Kathryn, a Kathryn Pike, no photo or bio available in the cast list. I watch her episode. She looks about as different from Kathryn Merteuil as you can get, but still, somehow I know it's her. Her. She plays a college freshman, best friend to another female college student who just got murdered. With bleach-blonde hair, bubblegum lips, punk rock boots, a nasty sullen attitude, and improbably, a deep Southern accent. The accent sounds authentic enough to my ears, although as a New Yorker, I'm not exactly the one to judge. She shows up during the investigation, and again at the suspect's trial. I watch it for a second time, then a third. Can't stop thinking about it afterwards, that TV episode, what she looked like in it.

On Facebook, "Kathryn Pike" is a veterinarian, or a recent law school graduate, or a proud wife and mother, or a student "majoring in Dildo Studies at Hoe-vard University" which sounds like a joke Kathryn would make, but ends up being a chubby redheaded teenager from the UK. On Instagram, "Kathryn Pike" posts pictures of landscapes and dogs. I try to put it out of my mind, to tell myself it isn't her. But I can't. I go back to IMDb, to the episode cast list. I start looking up the social media profiles of the other bit actors in that episode. Then I start sliding into their DMs.

_I'd rather talk about this over the phone_, one of them tells me.

Plum Bainbridge. She played the murderer's girlfriend. A stranger's name, but with something familiar in it, because it's only a certain specific type of asshole that gives their daughter a name like Plum.

"Is she dead?" the voice on the other end of the line says. And that's when I know I have her.

"Are you with the police?" she says.

"I'm her boyfriend."

I tell Plum my girlfriend has gone missing, she failed to show up to our dinner date at the Italian restaurant and has been unreachable since, I went by her house in Toluca Lake and she wasn't there, but I didn't want to involve the police just yet because maybe it was nothing and besides, she hates cops. I didn't want to get her into trouble if she was alive and didn't want to be found, but at the same time I was worried, because she'd called the day before our dinner date to confirm the time, and anyway it wasn't like her to ghost anyone. We'd met in Los Angeles but she was a New York girl, very direct. I'd never felt like there was anything she couldn't tell me.

"Fuck. Please tell me this is a joke."

I picture Kathryn coming to my door with a bottle of champagne and a smug grin. _Silly rabbit. Ha ha, you actually thought we were at war? Kansas turned you into such a complete pussy that you can't even take a joke anymore? That's the saddest thing I've ever heard. Now hand over those car keys 'cause your Jaguar is mine now, and grab your swim trunks and sunscreen while you're at it because we're driving over to Malibu in ten minutes. Oh and Seb? I mean it about the sunscreen. The last thing I need is someone taking our photo and me having to explain why I'm apparently dating a giant lobster._

I ask her why she thought Kathryn was dead.

"Are you really her boyfriend? If you are, you should already know the answer."

"Cocaine."

"Yes."

"If there's anything you know, anything at all..."

"I don't know what to tell you." Her voice relaxes into what I suspect is its natural cadence, the calm precise enunciation of someone who believes with all her heart that she went to a better prep school than you. "We were friends for a bit, but then she moved out of state and we sort of drifted apart from each other. I don't even have her number anymore." She drifts into a reverie: "I was surprised when you told me you were her boyfriend. When I knew her, she _really_ wasn't the relationship type. Now I like being in a relationship, I think it's important to be vulnerable and I find it inspiring to be in love, but to her, romance was just a distraction. She told me she used to date rich and powerful men for ego reasons, but their care and feeding proved to be more trouble than it was worth."

"It wasn't like that with us. Did she go by other names besides Kathryn Pike? Other stage names, I mean."

"With me she mostly went by Kathryn Pike. She did tell me her real name once, but I'm assuming you already know it."

"Kathryn Merteuil."

"That's it. She said she'd changed it to Pike because casting directors could never pronounce her real name correctly. But she also said it wasn't her ideal choice, and that she might change it again once she managed to get to LA."

"Did she tell you what to?"

"I don't remember the exact name. Something French, but more pronounceable. Curtsy, or something like that."

"Did she talk a lot about moving to LA?"

"Only all the time."

"And did you know any of her, uh, drug contacts back in New York?"

"No. Sorry. I just know that staying sober was a struggle for her. She went to meetings at this church in Brooklyn." She lets out a big stagy sigh. "I just hope she's okay..."

She gives me the church's name. I don't contact them.

Curtsy...Coeurcis...Coursey...Courcy...no, my princess would never forget the aristocratic _de_. Kathryn de Courcy.

I scroll through Kathryn de Courcy's Facebook page. The latest post is a crowded shot of her in a multiracial group of women, all in minidresses, all with big smiles on their faces and drinks in their hands. The comments:

_Happy 26th!_

_Here's to your best year yet!_

_Happy bday Kathryn! _

_Party on gurl [balloon emoji champagne emoji balloon emoji fireworks emoji heart emoji]_

Of course.

Kathryn is now officially ten years younger than I am.

I get out of my apartment, take the elevator down, and go outside to pace around aimlessly past the homeless tents, needing to walk off some of my excitement before I text my former step-sister to make arrangements.

When Law & Order Kathryn got on the witness stand to confront the boy who murdered her best friend, she'd cried: real, ugly tears.


	8. Chapter 8

Kathryn:

What he looks like, as I walk out:

Hurt. As if every part of him is in pain, even though I'm the one with the (thankfully hidden) bruises on my body. I did this. I did it to him, made him remember who he was, without any way to integrate it into who he is or who he wanted to be. I wanted him for entertainment, for comfort, the easy familiarity of his touch, welcome relief from my real life of constantly trying to impress strangers. But he was never the heartless seducer I told myself he was, he's weak. Of course he is, how could he not be? He's never had to be strong.

What I think, as I walk out:

I have to end this. Now. Because he's weak. And I know, surely as I know my own body, that weakness in someone like him is dangerous.

What I want, as the Lyft drops me off at my door and I can finally collapse on my own bed:

To tell him. I can't, not yet...but if I told you you'd understand, right Seb? Like you did when we were two latchkey kids lounging around on the French sofa and I bitched to you about my suckup friends and my assembly-line jock boyfriends, and you'd tell of your plans to screw those suckup friends and we'd laugh at the same time, it was a joke we both got, and if I told you now you'd still get it, right? If I told you that I'm absolutely, fully aware of the absurdity of the life I live right now. That I have real friends now, good ones, and yet I'd undercut any of them in a minute to get the right part, and will probably have to soon, especially Dounia with that deceptively innocent deadpan face of hers, her skin white porcelain long before it cracks. That I've avoided having work done as much out of contempt for the idea of spending so much money on something so patriarchal as out of fear of what happens if a procedure goes wrong, and yet if I don't get a breakout role soon it's inevitable that I'll do it. That barre doesn't actually feel much more empowering for me than bulimia did, that I don't really like going to the spa for facials with "the girls", it doesn't feel like pampering or like fun, just like one of a long list of things I have to do, that I'd rather spend that money and time baking on a beach towel or stuffing my face at the local ramen joint, that actually I don't want to be pretty at all period but that's what it takes, isn't it, to be _seen_

Sebastian:

When I greet her with a freshly poured glass of champagne, she grins.

"Nice. Are you proposing a toast?"

"Of course."

"And what shall we toast to? Oh wait, let me guess. To your victory over your evil schoolgirl nemesis Kathryn Merteuil? If you can call it that...well, to be fair, you did get me to crawl on my knees. Or maybe it's your victory because you actually convinced me to come back for another round" -she lowers her head slightly, looks up at me mischievously from behind the shade of her chocolate hair, actually giggles- "despite knowing it's a very bad idea."

"Silly rabbit," I say, quoting that stupid cereal commercial, the one that played alongside all those 90's cartoons we both know by heart and she'll never admit to remembering. "I'm not toasting my victory over Kathryn Merteuil. I'm toasting my victory over Kathryn de Courcy."

She collapses. I don't even have the time to raise my glass to my lips before she's on the floor. Her alcohol spills. Her face lies carelessly on its side, smushed up against the floor tiles. Ugly. Her glass, for some reason, doesn't break.

"A little dramatic," I say, "don't you think?"

_I'm an actress_, I expect her to say, _we're supposed to be dramatic. Or did you miss that basic knowledge on career day back in grade school? Moron._

She doesn't speak, doesn't move.

I reach out for her blindly, not knowing whether my intention is to check her vitals or lift her up and force her to look me in the face. "Don't touch me," she says in a low voice. I withdraw my hand.

After a few minutes she gets up and walks to the sofa, where she sits with her head buried in her hands, body folded into a tense knot, again unmoving.

I watch, numb and dumb, sick and useless. Her conqueror.

After another few minutes she gets her phone out of her bag and begins pecking at it.

"Kathryn?" She doesn't look up. "What are you doing?"

"Blocking you on all social media," she says in that same low expressionless voice. "Not that it matters. I'm sure you've got a list drawn up of all my contacts professional and personal, probably in Excel spreadsheet format. You always were good at blackmail."

"I'm not like that anymore." I remember her face at the dive bar, that hint of uncertainty, the aphrodisiac power of that glance. "At least, I wasn't. Not before..."

"Before what? Before I had sex with you?"

"It was never just about sex."

"I do not fucking care what it was about!" She looks up from her phone. Her eyes look the way they did at the bar. "Go on, Sebastian," she says, her voice unexpectedly soft. "Tell me I don't have to do this. Tell me I can just tell everyone the truth and still get roles. Tell me Time's Up won the battle for everything and we're all good now, we got rid of all the woman-hating pedophile executives and the only thing that matters now is talent. Tell me I don't have an expiration date. Go on, tell me Sebastian..."

"How would I know?" I tell her. "I don't work in the movie industry."

"That's right," she says, "you don't." She goes back to pecking at her phone, then finishes with that and just sits there staring at the wall.

I walk over to the closet, open the sliding doors, and step back so she can see the safe box. I enter the combination, slowly, so she can see. By the time I get to the third digit my hands are shaking.

"This is everything," I say to her dead unfocused eyes. "Everything I have, everything I am that's of value. Every camera that isn't in my phone, every journal I've ever written from middle school up to the present. Do with it what you will."

For an agonizingly long moment, she doesn't seem to notice. Then she nods slightly and slowly gets up. Her fingers run hesitantly over the Leica, the hipster Polaroid, the ultramodern DSLR and its collection of detachable lenses. They land on the Leica again, considering, clutch onto it for a half second and then let go. Instead she turns to the journals, carries the whole pile over to the sofa and thumbs through them intently. It feels like she's thumbing through my innards. I stand across the room from her for what feels like hours, just watching her read. Her fingers on my pages, the most beautiful thing.

At first, her face remains a mask. Then I see it begin to scrunch up at certain passages. I don't have to read over her shoulder to know that they're the passages that reference her. Mentions of her are scattered through every one of those journals: _I_ _shouldn't have hooked up last night with a girl who looked like Kathryn. Not good for the mental health._ Or: S_he's trying to be Ms. Merteuil, but she doesn't even have 1/10th of the arrogance down, let alone the other qualities._ All those things I wrote thinking that no one would ever see. And now I am seen. After all those years hiding behind the camera, I am seen.

She pauses at one point and rubs her eyes, a quick, rage-filled movement. Her shoulders hunch up, like she's putting up a wall against the pain.

_I didn't want this._

Except that I did, of course.

When she's done reading all of the journals she looks up at me. Every emotion in the world, our entire history, passes in rapid fire across her face.

"It was-" she stops herself. Runs to the bathroom and slams the door behind her.

I wait, not too close to the door this time. I hear sobbing over the gushing tap water. _You don't have to hide from me,_ I want to say. Y_ou don't have to ever hide from me again._ But I restrain myself.

She comes out of the bathroom red-faced, her eyes wet with tears, but somewhat calmer.

"It was you, Sebastian," she says. "If I've ever loved anybody, if I've ever been capable of loving anybody...it was you. It was always you."

I take her in my arms. My heart is beating fast, so fast it's painful. I feel like a virgin, of all things.

She melts into me, softly and sweetly. It feels so good I start to become afraid and pull away just a bit.

"Why didn't you smash the Leica?" I ask her.

"Silly rabbit," she says, a sad, tender smile on her lips. "It isn't about revenge for me anymore."

I tilt her chin up and look deep into those startling green eyes. She's telling the truth.

I lead her to the bed and lay her down and kiss her lips, kiss her wet face, kiss her all over. I think of all the years we didn't see each other, all the years I tried to be good. The failed attempts at ethical polyamory in college, the aborted "mature" relationships with heavily therapized older women, the hookups with models at drug-fueled hotel parties, the experiments with BDSM, all those attempts to crush or divert or control the darkness I knew I carried within me, and yet now I'm with the bitch of bitches herself, and the darkness has disappeared. Consummate angel. Coke whore. Mine. She kisses me back and whispers "Seb" in my ear, and it's like I can see into the future, the two of us simply together, no more games, no more war. And I realize: _this _is why monogamy wasn't enough, why polyamory wasn't enough. _This_ is what I wanted from the start. _This_ is the thing I'll fight for, the thing I'll lie and kill for, the thing I'll do absolutely anything at all to keep.


	9. Chapter 9

_Busce la forma de olvidarte..._

"No Me Conviene", La India

Kathryn:

What follows is the most agonizing few weeks of my life since back when I was dating Court.

It starts with me sitting on Sebastian's couch, doing literally nothing but trying to indulge in a moment of self-pity, but of course those moments can't last. I could feel Sebastian's eyes sticking on me, wanting something from me, as usual. When he opened the safe I was still too mentally fucked-up to react right away, but eventually I snapped out of it and took the pile of journals and read them as he so clearly wanted me to do. They were boring, frankly. Sordid stories of threesomes and affairs with married women and lots of hookups at parties with models, but nothing with any models he worked with directly, no one underage-nothing actionable, in other words. The most actionable thing he'd ever done was that stunt he pulled on Cecile in high school. Literal sexual blackmail plus messing with her drink, very classy Valmont, very Casanova. But not... (A memory popped into my head of my little playdate with Court's virgin moron, our girl talk, our shared "secrets". "_Cecile, you had an orgasm. I'm so proud of you. You're becoming a woman!" _Not something I could use.) The journals took a turn after our reunion in Hollywood. Cliched straight-porn fantasies of humiliating me by cumming in my stuck-up bitch face, alternating with truly nauseating images of me walking down the aisle in a white wedding dress. _Okay Sebastian, we get it, you have a Madonna whore complex._ By the time I got to the second white dress I knew exactly what I had to do.

Ignore his expensive photography equipment, because this isn't about revenge. Instead look up at him all sad-faced but with a note of grateful hope, then sob and run to the bathroom like a tough girl too ashamed to show anyone her feminine emotional weakness. Rub face just raw enough to get it across that you've been crying while still appearing attractive, then carefully wet cheeks and corners of eyes with water from the faucet, the old crocodile tears trick. It was disgusting to see just how easily Sebastian bought it. It never seemed to occur to him that as an actress, amazingly, I am capable of acting.

Unless he hasn't bought it at all. Unless he's just waiting, like he used to do, for the moment I've completely let my guard down, the moment of maximum pain to reveal everything. But I can't let myself think about that.

We're dating now. What this means is that he asks me out on dates, and I don't refuse him. I've set some ground rules: no talking in public about our past unless absolutely necessary. Our past being that he used to be my SAT tutor (not teacher, they could check the records on that) and we had a secret affair, and the fallout from our breakup led to my having to switch schools, but time heals all wounds and the age difference isn't so shocking anymore so we're mostly all good now. We even go out to dinner with some of my friends. Sebastian behaves perfectly, doesn't hint at our actual history, not even one small inside joke, but I still barely taste the Korean finger foods everyone keeps shoving in front of me. After the dinner is finally over I call Pyotr. We meet in a Denny's and he passes me a baggie full of cocaine and I head straight into the bathroom, for once not even looking at the mirror. Then O. calls to make sure I got home okay, and I tell her yes and flush the baggie down the toilet and drive home and then drink vodka until I pass out, thinking: I don't want this. Either Sebastian is his old self sadistically dangling the axe over my head, or else he really is stupid enough now to believe I'm the sweet insecure girl who just needed a good man's love, the new brunette version of Annette, and either way I don't want him anymore, I don't want him anymore, I don't want him anymore.

We were supposed to be equals. But that isn't going to happen.

I let him "put it anywhere", as originally promised. I've done anal sex before, and not liked it. It didn't hurt, like it does for most women, but it didn't make me come either. There just wasn't enough sensation: I figured because Mother Nature, in her infinite wisdom, had decided to put the nerve endings up front where they might actually do the species some good. Sebastian isn't naive enough to think I'm an anal virgin, he knows me too well for that particular lie. But he likes it just perfect anyway when he sticks his cock into my tight little hole and I say exactly what I know he wants me to say: "ow, slow down, hold on, just go gently, ow, fuck, it's too big, it hurts, it won't fit, are you sure it'll fit? Please, not so fast, it hurts. Ow ow ow." Because, like every other heterosexual male, what really turns him on about anal sex is my pain.

I think back to our good times, as if I'm remembering a completely different person. Memories of sitting in the front seat of his Jaguar, hair whipping in the wind as he drove us down the West Side Highway, driving insanely recklessly fast but with good enough reflexes to get away with it, faster and better than anyone from New York City had a right to drive. And me looking out at the sunset over the Hudson so I wouldn't stare at him, feeling the warmth of his hand under mine and thinking: not yet. Not until I've graduated high school, until I'm safely away from Mother, until I'm somewhere no one cares about how many guys I've slept with-until I'm untouchable.

Junior year of college I was Blanche. "I have aaal-ways depended on the kindness of strangers"-walking straight into that trap with steady steps like Fate told you to do it, like the Final Girls I would play later, the inner audience voice screaming _no you idiot don't_ giving just the right amount of frayed edge to the coquettish line-I pretended to be best friends with a Southern girl that year, just to get the accent right. I played Blanche as every adult female on the Upper East Side ever. As every stay-at-home mom trying to pretend her old moldy MBA still meant something, every overly tanned white woman walking north in $1000 stiletto heels past 96th, 100th, 106th St, heart pounding out of her chest, for sex tourism-yes I did that too, before I was forced to live there. I played Blanche without fully understanding her. When she shied away frantically from the light in her face, I gave it the standard Classic Lit interpretation that said the light was a metaphor for the truth, those genteel Southern belles how they feared it. I sided with Stanley then, pushing girls down to the bed, ripping off their tasteful little outfits, then standing there all smug with his camera. The truth will out: she's a slut after all. Now I know what Blanche was really afraid of. Now my ability to recognize my own face in the mirror shifts depending on the lighting, its intensity and direction, even the way I turn my head. Now I stay inside between the hours of 11 and 2, reapply sunscreen every 2 hours as directed, redo my makeup over that. Then smile and toss my hair, 'cause I'm a fun loving, sun-kissed California girl.

More than that: I understand now what Blanche _wanted_.

To create something of beauty. She didn't, of course, but Vivien Leigh did. People say the role helped to destroy her, intensified her bipolar disorder, even hastened her death. To which I say simply: Vivien Leigh didn't die.

I'm alive now. But I don't have much time left.

One morning as I'm checking my hair for flyaways before heading out, I see it, nestled in among the brown, the first white strand. I pluck it out by the roots and stuff it deep into the garbage can. That was my mother's secret, too, for staying so young.

My mother the bitch. My mother the useless golddigger, ambitious for money and absolutely nothing more. Born and raised in the guido part of New Jersey, accent successfully ironed out.

We're at my place, having a "relaxing" night in. I'm standing at the counter of the kitchen area of my little back-house studio, which isn't actually in Toluca Lake. Sebastian's sprawled out on the loveseat as I pour him drink after drink.

"I love the way you make these cocktails," he says. He's been doing that a lot lately: I love your x, I love your y, I love your xyz_. Just say it,_ I always think, _say the damn three words and get it over with. I honestly have no clue what you're so afraid of. I mean, what am I going to do if I don't like it? Leave you?_

"Thank you," I say. He's still looking at me, so I say "thank you" again. Too late I realize he was expecting some kind of witty insult, some "old Kathryn"-style barb. He asks if I'm okay, I tell him I'm a bit tired. He nods and says I've probably been doing too much work, because of course, that's the problem.

We talk about normal things: work, politics. He tells me about some models he's been shooting with. He pretends to evince no sexual interest in them; I pretend to be aggrieved at his sexual interest.

More cocktails. I pour out the contents of my glass into the sink, whenever I think he isn't looking.

Around midnight I pretend to look at my phone.

"Shit shit shit."

"What is it?"

"I forgot that I have a shoot tomorrow morning. Like at dawn."

"Seriously?"

"Yeah, it's outside. Sorry, looks like we're going to have to take a raincheck for tonight."

"All right," he says, his voice a slurry mumble. He takes his phone out and starts jabbing at it. I go and sit down next to him.

"Don't forget, if you take an Uber out you're going to have to get another one back to retrieve your car." He grunts. "Just trying to help. I know you said you were trying to cut back on spending this month. You could stay here for the night, if you don't mind sleeping on this while I'm in bed."

"It'll be difficult, but..." He grins, puts the phone away.

"Good night," I tell him softly and give him a peck on the lips, then let it deepen into a real, deep, hungry kiss. His hands grip my hair, and then my waist. I feel it in my blood, in my bones, the pull of him, the gravitational inevitability of us. I feel it naturally, in every detail, just as my Method teacher taught me.

I push him away. "On second thought, maybe that isn't such a good idea. Not if we want to get any sleep tonight."

He nods, not happy about it, but knowing I can't be pushed on this.

"Hey, Kat, can you do me a favor?"

"Sure, what?"

"See if I'm safe enough to drive. I'll walk the length of that carpet, and you can tell me if I'm walking in a straight line."

"No problem."

He staggers across the carpet, barely managing not to fall over. Even like this he's possessed of a real allure, a certain roguish charm. _It's too bad you never got into acting_, I think, _because casting directors would just love you. They'd consider you perfect to be their new James Bond clone or romantic comedy love interest. You wouldn't have to change a thing._

"So?" he says, looking at me with those adorable puppy dog eyes. "Am I good to hit the 101?"

I give him a thumbs up and a big smile.

"Good to go."

**END**


End file.
